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The article examines the participation of farmers in the Mesas de Desarrollo Rural (MDRs) established in Uruguay in 2007. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with various stakeholders between 2016 - 2018 to explore their participation, analyse official documents and do participant observation of meetings. The main findings indicate the adaptability of these mechanisms to territorial and producer conditions; their openness to other non-agricultural sectoral institutions; and difficulties in maintaining or renewing the participation dynamic, particularly of farmers' representatives. The impacts of the political changes in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic on MDRs were also examined after new interview of new policy responsibles.

Uruguay’s family livestock production shows an array of varied organizational arrangements, whose diversity reflects the different needs, interests, and even feelings, and values of the producers. Accordingly, cooperation processes aiming at obtaining both individual and collective benefits show different formalization and coordination frameworks. Through a series of interviews with representatives of family rancher’s group in the region known as “Litoral Norte” (Northern Coast) of Uruguay, an attempt was made understand how collective action is coordinated in the region. Results account for diverse endogenous and / or exogenous processes, which reflect the existence of shared norms, learning processes and rules of use, as a means to solve collective action problems., La ganadería familiar de Uruguay cuenta con una diversidad de expresiones organizativas, generadas en función de diferentes necesidades, intereses comunes, e incluso sentimientos y valores. La cooperación para obtener beneficios individuales como colectivos, se da en diversos marcos de formalización y coordinación. A partir de entrevistas a referentes de colectivos de ganaderos familiares seleccionados en el Litoral Norte del país, se procuró comprender los procesos de coordinación de la acción colectiva en la región. Los resultados dan cuenta de procesos endógenos y/o exógenos, que reflejan las normas compartidas, aprendizajes, reglas de uso, como un medio para solucionar problemas de acción colectiva., Family livestock farming in Uruguay has a diversity of organizational arrangements, surging from different needs, mutual interests, and feelings and values. Cooperation to obtain individual and collective benefits occurs in several formalization and coordination frameworks. Interviews with representatives from livestock family livestock groups on the Northern Littoral of the country were a basis to assess the processes of coordinating collective action in the region. The results show endogenous or exogenous processes, which reflect shared norms, learning-processes and rules of use, as a means to solve collective action problems.

Dynamics in agrarian systems of Uruguay and Argentina present some positive aspects as well as other potentially devastating. Traditional producers have a production strategy based on looking for a balance between cattle and agriculture production, alternating pasture and crops. A new actor: investment-fund-managers rent the land for agriculture production, and from our team¿s discussions emerged that they follow a strategy similar to that of financial capital: decide what to do in terms of the expected net profit. Economical, ecological and social consequences could be expected. Modeling and simulating with Multi-Agent-Systems was used for exploring the system¿s evolution with the objective of improving our understanding of the agrarian system and to contribute to the envision of possible effects on land use caused by changes in product prices and/or policy changes. The model considers the soil resource as having productive potential and assumes that each traditional producer annually decides whether to change or not its production activity over 25% of its land units or to rent to investment fund managers. A six year database with historical production activity revenues and product¿s prices was used for the simulation, where each simulated year randomly chooses from this database. The first results of these simulations generate questions about the dynamics of the natural resources, challenge the survival of traditional farmers and anticipate landscape changes associated to economic, ecological and social changes. A strong variability was observed from year to year in respect to land use. Results show that if the current price structure is maintained as well as the relation between net profits of agriculture and cattle, then a tendency to expand Investment Fund Managers¿ lands will occur. We conclude that the newly arrived Investment Fund Managers tend to induce a rent activity in traditional producers as well as a substantial increase in agricultural activities (decreasing cattle activities). The historical cattle-agricultural model well known in Uruguay and Argentina has been challenged by market-imposed conditions.The simulation shows that social effects should also be foreseen.